Not quite going to plan…

I took the scooter for a big ride to the Mount Beauty Mountain Goat Scooter run. That was 850 Km round trip. Firstly I am still in the process of adapting my cylinder head to suit the longstroke without base gasket. This is not prefect yet and so I am running really rich for safety reasons. So I suffered a few problems with plug fouling, thankfully though nothing major and I made the trip there and back with only paranoid delusions of major engine problems (including rebuilding the engine the week before only to discover the engine knocking noise was actually a Sito exhaust bracket failure).

The main problem though was that on open road the scooter was a lot more exposed to the elements. My upgear kit actually slowed me down because I couldn't get to the power up in the higher revs. On the way to work I can cruise at 110Km/hr and have a lot more power to spare (up to 130Km/hr). On the open road I was sitting at 105Km/hr full throttle (this was what I was getting with a bolt on Pinasco and no porting etc).

If I took the upgear kit off, then I get I would get much higher top speeds because I would be bringing my peak power down lower. Another option is to leave it as is and adjust my power up - since I have not adjusted the cylinder head properly and since my carb is tuned more for safety than performance, this is the option I will go for.

In other news I have been trying really hard to get a TrailTech Vapor set-up to work with my Vespa. After much effort I failed to get it to work (temp sensor fell apart, speed just doesn't read) so I am just going to have create my own. There are really cheap Atmel boards about so now is the time to get back into the tech side of the scooter (which is where the internetscooter project all started :)